


Just Keep Breathing

by endae



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - The Last Mabelcorn, Demonic Possession, Episode: s02e15 The Last Mabelcorn, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Strangulation, off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 21:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13280133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endae/pseuds/endae
Summary: “Dipper,” he finally says, his gruff voice resoundingly still. It’s arguably the biggest facade he’s upheld in years, a wave of purepanicjust below the surface. “I need you to listen to me, ‘kay? I need you to keep breathing.”





	Just Keep Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr Link](http://endae.tumblr.com/post/129290645000/just-keep-breathing) 
> 
> context for this sinnery: I had to watch nearly all of season 2B on live streams because I was in Europe at the time. so of course TLM aired on a rainy night with rocky internet. of course my internet cut out at the height of Dipper chanting "trust no one" over and over and I didn't see the end of the episode until like three days later.
> 
> of course I screamed and wrote this at 3am to cope with not knowing

His nephew isn’t breathing well, and Stan isn’t fairing much better.

He doesn’t know what unworldly force it is that drove him to the basement to begun with, but the thought now of ignoring it horrifies him more than he needs to dwell on.

The elevator light illuminating the second floor piqued his interest. The gasps echoing in the vents are what stole it.

He jams the call button the moment he can, anxiety slipping into the spaces where reason failed to fill him. There had to be a reason. Some nerd joke. An excitement that threatened nausea, the way it had when Ford first reappeared, the way Dipper doubled over at the realization of it all. Anything.

 _Anything_ but this.

The elevator dings, and he comes to himself. The second floor. He’s never been able to open it in the years that he’s lived here. Stan already feels his pulse skyrocket when he reaches for its knob, a knowing _click_ of a lock long weathered, but finally giving. 

Breathe. Inhale, exhale. Everything’s fine.

Except that everything isn’t fine.

The low light of the study hides a lot, but not enough. Under the green glow of the monitor hanging from the wall, Stan finds him. He’s there, curled against the rug and gasping for the air he isn’t getting.

_“Dipper!”_

And he’ll curse the moment he lets his nephew’s name be torn from him, a moment of weakness he may never live down.

He’s at his side in a heartbeat.

Stan falls to his knees when he’s close enough, a twinge of pain shooting through them on collision, but he couldn’t care less. There’s the unspoken torrent sitting on his tongue of what’s wrong, _where the hell is Ford_ , why did he leave him _alone_ , like _this—_

Tempering his initial panic, Stan leans in to look at him up close. He does the only thing compelling him in the moment, some powerful protective instinct that has him lifting Dipper up to lean against chest, snaking an arm around his back. Some rational part of his head screams for to stop, not to touch him, but he _can’t_. Not when his calloused hands cradle his face, fighting just to get his eyes to focus.

And his breath hitches when Dipper sinks further into his hand, angling his head just enough to reveal the source of his agony.

It chills his blood, what he sees.

There are vicious red marks all along Dipper’s neck, angry and spreading from his chest to the underside of his chin. His breathing is practically nonexistent — raspy and painful, his body twitching with convulsions with each one he takes. Every inhale is a struggle, and each time he draws an empty breath, Stan feels it drive him further and further to a breakdown.

He isn’t equipped for this. Bullets, blood, and broken bones, but he never saw the day someone wrung their hands around his neck for more than a few seconds. He wasn’t a child when they happened.

Dipper’s quip of _“It’s a chokehold!”_ ghosts at the back of his head, unnerving.

For as inflamed as his neck appeared, Dipper’s arms were cold to the touch. It’s an observation too well amplified by his swollen, dark tinted lips, the ashen tone of his skin against everything else. It takes every shred of willpower not to yank off his own jacket to wrap him in. But he can’t, not when there’s still so much isn’t sure of. How bad this is, the fear of jostling him further doing more harm than good.  

Dismissing any and every thought at reasoning with him, Stan works up what courage he can to guide him back to consciousness, however long that took.

There’s no time for explanations. Not now.

“Dipper,” he finally says, his gruff voice resoundingly still. It’s arguably the biggest facade he’s upheld in years, a wave of pure _panic_ just below the surface. “I need you to listen to me, ‘kay? I need to you to keep breathing.”

It almost feels like asking too much.

He’s doing just that. That’s all he can do, _try_ to do, lie paralyzed and wordless while Stan tries to piece the shattered world back together for him. And it’s a crushing thought– that he, of all people, has to be the one to help him come to his senses after spending years alienating his own.

But it’s one he initiates with firm touches and soft reassurances, his hand never breaking connection with him. Dipper’s a picture of absolute fragility, frail and sickly against Stan’s dark attire, but he puts the thought out of mind to keep the both of them calm. It’s hard when there’s too much to look at.  

( _‘Was he always this small?’_ )

Stan wishes he knew why it was possible for someone his size to be so light but feel so heavy at the same time.

His mind is racing a million miles a second. One by one, the thoughts hit him, each more dire than the last, but never letting it slip past his disguises. He needs something to keep him occupied. Something to keep Dipper from slipping too far back into his own head.

He flinches when Stan’s hand hovers a little too close to his collarbone, and the instinct behind it nearly makes him ill. He eases his hand in slowly to not scare him, pressing his fingers lightly on the side of Dipper’s neck to read for a pulse. It’s faint and slow, but it’s _there,_ and he clings to it.

The first sign of movement he gets is a trembling hand, mere centimeters from the ground, but unmistakably reaching his way. A cry for help without words if he’s ever felt one.

Kid needs it, and fast. More than what he can provide, but he can’t bring himself to leave him alone again.

An idea blooms in his mind, and Stan slouches to tuck his ragdoll-like head closer. He’s still staring with glassy eyes, not even at him, and it’s making this harder than he could have ever conceived it to be. He hasn’t spoken a word. Hasn’t moved an inch since he’d first found him.

When Dipper’s eyelids begin to droop a little heavier than he’d like, Stan finds himself applying a small bit of pressure from his thumb next to the corner of his eye. They recede.

_‘C’mon. Stay with me.’_

“You hear that?” he asks. _His heart_ , he wants to elaborate, but his throat is quickly becoming as choked up as his nephew’s. Dipper nods his head, barely. “Listen to it. And don’t stop.”

He regrets giving that command the moment it leaves him. Against all logistical thought, Stan knows that there’s no legitimate possibility to sync heartbeats just by listening, and he abandons the idea altogether. Not when his own heart threatens to stop every time his nephew blinks too slowly.

But he needs to keep him distracted. Awake.

Giving Dipper the time he needs to come around leaves Stan with too much of it to speculate. Only he knew about the study. Only he knew about the pile of keys rusting away in the basement with all the ones that failed to open it. Before it sinks too deeply into him, Stan wrestles to stay calm, but the scenarios running in his head keep him anything but.

Because Mabel’s hands are too small and too innocent to leave marks like that on her brother.

Because there’s no sign of his own.

But he’ll damn the thought for a time that isn’t this one.

In his fleeting composure, Stan never stops searching for signs of life. He feels his heart drop to his stomach when he finally focuses in on one — that there are tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to fall and take more than just dignity with them. And it _hurts_ , the way he gums up his eyes so they won’t stream down his cheeks, like there’s still an illusion to uphold here. But Dipper has more than enough reasons to cry; it hurt, it felt like dying. It was distressing, it was scary–

 _It was **Ford**_ —

All the signs, all the alarm bells blaring in his head. It’s not a conclusion he wants to jump to, not after he’s seen this kid chase after his trail all summer. Not after seeing the ways his eyes had glowed in the face of the working portal, or the wretch of excited nerves that had him heaving in disbelief. Eyes too dim now. It’s become all too clear that there’s been a struggle.

It’s a less than professional observation, but coupled with all of it, shock was quickly becoming a very plausible assumption.

“You’re gonna be okay kiddo,” he soothes, wiping away at the tears Dipper won’t bring himself to let fall. There’s no shame in this. “Hang in there.”

To his desperate relief, he finds Dipper gaining more control by the second, the color beginning to flow back into his face. After too many tense minutes, _finally_ , he’s filling his lungs however he can, despite how much his body protested it. Fighting back, Stan reminds himself proudly.

His breathing is still anything but patterned, but the fact that he was breathing at all still a miracle.  With time, he watches him begin to draw longer breaths than what he had initially. Inhale. Exhale. Over and over, again and again. The sensation of Dipper’s back expanding into his arm is a welcome one, lungs only just beginning to show signs of recovery.

It’s small, but it’s progress.

“Just like that…in and out…”

What he wouldn’t give to make the pain stop.

“There, you’re doin’ great.”

With each passing second, he sees the lucidity beginning to creep back into his clouded eyes. For too long, he’d been staring off in the distance — looking, but never truly seeing. At long last, Stan finally sees something click in Dipper’s eyes, the way they met his own with a level of cognition that hadn’t been there before.

It’s too long for a sign that Dipper will be okay, but at long last, he gets one. It’s a cross between a wheeze and a cough, but it’s more than what he’s been hearing for minutes. He stills when he sees Dipper’s mouth part just slightly, a suffocated whisper breaking through.

“Gr…kle…St….”

It isn’t much, but it’s something.

He isn’t in a hurry for anything more than that. Stan keeps his hand tangled in his nephew’s hair, offering what little comfort he could.

“Just keep breathing…”

He has to tell himself the same.


End file.
